I am an evil giraffe. But I'm trying, Nick. I'm trying REAL HARD to be the wizard.

So, here’s the situation: guy with mental issues gets a gun and starts a rampage at a Philadelphia hospital. He shoots his caseworker (who later died of her wounds), then goes after a psychatrist named Dr. Lee Silverman… who promptly pulls out a gun from his desk and puts several bullets in the man, being wounded himself in the process. Mind you, the entire site is, of course, a gun-free zone.

The Christian Science Monitor is trying, here. It’s really, legitimately trying to concede the point that Dr. Silverman stopped a shooter before he could kill more people, and that everybody officially involved admits that. But I still have to point out this admittedly-small blind spot.

…the Pennsylvania hospital gunfight is already being recounted at least by some gun owners as a telling anecdote about life in a heavily armed nation where 60 million people suffer from some kind of mental-health problem.

For one thing, police are still trying to figure out why [Dr. Lee] Silverman was armed in the first place since bringing a gun to work is against the rules at the hospital.

In retrospect – budget cuts, or no – the Philadelphia Water Department probably shouldn’t have stolen the diamond eye of that sleeping spider-god in that ruined underground temple down at the third sub-level. Especially while the comet was in the sky during a full moon.

Specifically, the Democrat–controlled city of Philadelphia, which expects you to have a $300 license if you do anything in the city of Philadelphia that generates any “activity for profit” – even if that profit consists of $5.50 a year. I’m sure that the local Democratic party leaders will be happy enough to explain why it’s vitally necessary to hit up individual folks for licenses to (among other things) blog – and why it’s vitally important to concentrate on the ‘law’ part of ‘boneheaded law,’ and ignore ‘boneheaded’ completely – but out here in
Real-Person Land the phrase “absurd nonsense” comes to mind.

Hey, you know what phrase also comes to mind when thinking of Philadelphia? “Mass grave.”

(Via Drudge) I’m putting this one up mostly because of the last name – it’s Mayor Michael Nutter, and the game is “Give us money or we’ll shut down services that you don’t want to shut down.” It’s apparently a favorite game of urban Democrats, given that it seems to happen with distressing regularity in our larger cities:

The city has asked the state to approve a temporary sales tax increase in Philadelphia and allow changes to how the city makes its pension payments.

Without those changes, Nutter says nearly 1,000 police officers and 200 firefighters would be cut.

The reason for the cynicism is that threatened cuts like these are never in areas where voters might shrug and go “Fine” – which is of course where the cuts should be, for precisely that reason. Staying within budget is hard; it’s much easier to spend it all on feel-good projects (for various definitions of ‘feel-good’) and scare the taxpayer with budget cuts. In other words, Philly voters should contemplate that this is a problem that’s largely of the City of Philadelphia’s own making.

Alternatively, Philly voters could perhaps contemplate that the real problem is that they’re electing too many Democrats…